


Harry Potter and the Way of Kings

by die_eike



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Gen, I am sorry Brandon, Magic Systems Merged, Magic and Science, Smart Harry, Sorry JKR But The Cosmere Is Awesome, Spoilers Way of Kings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29449923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/die_eike/pseuds/die_eike
Summary: A strange encounter left 10-year old Harry in possession of a thick volume of incredible stories. Back then, of course, he didn't know how much it would change his life.Or:Harry reads the Way of Kings, decides that the freaky stuff he does must be Surgebinding, and consequently tries to get better at it. His magic does the rest.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 24





	1. Gifted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiterou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiterou/gifts).



> This work comes out of a plot bunny adoption from Kiterou. Thank you for this great idea.
> 
> Edit: After researching AO3 and FFN a bit, I realized that this idea is not as original as I have thought before (should have expected that - *doublefacepalm* - how could I not?). However, I will refrain from reading other magic system merging stories and chisel out my own approach unbiased by other authors' works. I might be inventing the wheel twice here, but maybe it turns out to be an interesting wheel, nevertheless. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing.

Most witches and wizards would agree that the day he got branded on his forehead by death and betrayal was the day that Harry Potter’s story began.

Yet, when Harry looks back, today, he wonders. The table clock on his office desk keeps ticking the seconds away, brass hands peeking out from behind a jar of the worn and bent quills he lets fly scratching over report after report, which then pile up in messy stacks beside his chipped, but favourite tea mug, a bunch of literature on legal theories and their applications in law enforcement and a box of Bertie Bott's.

He wonders how that fateful evening so long ago could ever be called the beginning of his story, when he had been nothing else than a small child, caged in by the weakness of his body and his mind, incapacitated by the lack of growth.

He is certain that this had not been the day when his story began, rather, it had marked a turning point in the story of others: Dumbledore’s, Voldemort’s, his parents’. Severus Snape’s. Peter Pettigrew’s. Because even a rat had made more choices on that day than he. He had the agency of a sack of potatoes.

Harry stops at his mindless, yet meaningful task to push open the desk drawer. Dust motes rise up to flicker and glimmer in the warm shine of the desk lamp. He pushes his glasses back onto his nose. For a moment, he is tempted to fix their prescription power with a flick of his wand, but then decides to leave things as they are for a few days longer, maybe a week. He has aged, just as the precious item inside the drawer, and he guesses he has aged well, and what else would have been expected from the Boy Who Lived? Smiling, he pictures sprightly, grey haired Ginny, who still settles as confidently onto a broom as other witches of her age might settle into a recliner. Their rambunctious children have long since written their own history, as have their children theirs.

Harry’s nose tickles from the smell of old paper. While he lets his fingers slowly trail over the wrinkled and faded cover, he feels a warmth spreading inside his belly that has nothing to do with the Firewhisky he had in his tea. It has to do with a memory. A memory of the day a story began.

It was a bright day with a clear sky and a golden sun, and it would have been warm if it hadn’t been so cold. Harry shivered, gripping his baggy jumper on both sides, in an attempt to keep in a measure of warmth. But then the tips of his fingers were getting numb, so he tucked them under his armpits. The wind was so cold up here that the broken-and-patched frame of his glasses caught frost. His teeth chattered, but over this, he could very well make out the voices rising up from below.

“Potter – Rotter!” He ducked the attack that followed, crouching low behind the wall. “What’s that freak doin’ up there? Oi! Oi, Potter! Look what I have for you!”

He didn’t look, of course. One shower of snow had already been enough. It was gradually melting its way through his collar and down the back of his neck. Harry cursed Dudley’s gang of witless bullies as much as he was baffled at how he had managed to get onto the roof of the school. He knew he had been running down a corridor one second, pulse and feet racing, the lot of them at his heels, jeering. The next second, he was on the flat roof. On a very beautifully blue-skied and frost-glazed, very Februarish day. Without mittens or cap or jacket. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Plus, they had found him nonetheless.

Another snowball swished over his head.

“What’s that racket? Caught and cornered something, you lovely beasts?”

Harry risked a peek over the low wall. He didn’t know if he should feel relieved by what he saw. It was the new caretaker, a really –really– tall man with jet-black hair and eyes of an icy blue. It was not that he often noted with such detail the features of the grown-ups that were a part of, but not really took a part in his life. But Mister Heimlich? He had eyes you couldn’t ever forget, Harry was sure. It was not really because of their startling blueness, but because of the intensity with which they shone. And there was something else – Harry couldn’t describe it. He didn’t really look like a caretaker, yet somehow he did.

“Is it hare or fox, I wonder?”

When Mister Heimlich spoke, it was always some gibberish that came out. As if he were playing a game where you weren’t allowed voice out what you wanted to say, but had to bundle and pack the message into layers of meaning. Some thought him funny, some creepy, but Harry found him quite exhausting.

Mister Heimlich, looking up, had found his hiding spot. Their gazes locked.

“Aaaah,” Mister Heimlich exhaled then. “Apologies, young friend, for my ignorance. Neither hare nor fox, but another species entirely. Come down, now. No need to fear me so.”

Harry cast around, but Dudley and his cronies were long gone, shooed away by the caretaker’s presence. He hoisted himself up, gripped the icy edge of the wall with trembling fingers and eyed down.

“I don’t know how!”

“Is that so? There must be a solution to your predicament, I am sure.” Mister Heimlich touched his pointy chin, a gloved finger tapping his cheek. Then his face lightened up in an exaggerated expression of a flash of genius. “Have you ever heard of the theory of absolute equilibrium? That all scales might balance each other out just by simply – ”

“Please, Mister Heimlich,” Harry chattered, jaw clenched. “I don’t know how to get down because I have no idea how I got up here in the first place.” Very rarely he would interrupt grown-ups in their tattled lectures on important things, but desperate situations called for desperate means. “It’s cold,” he pled.

Harry guessed he saw Mister Heimlich’s eyes widen a tad. “I see,” he said.

It stirred quite a ruckus, with children eager to press their curious noses onto classroom windows instead of into maths books, to get a glimpse at blue-lipped, tousle-haired, crazy Potter how he shakily climbed down the ladder that Mister Heimlich had hastily fetched. The school’s headmaster would be informed, as would be the Dursleys, who would condemn him to detention in the cupboard for two weeks. But before all this ensued, Mister Heimlich steered Harry to the caretaker’s room, where he pressed a cup of thick black tea into his hands, brushed the dust off a well-used blanket and urged him to sit down on a cushion on the floor, with his back to the heater. Very soon, his shivering eased.

Harry sat, stunned, grateful. The caretaker’s room emanated a weird mixture of homely comfort and exotic strangeness. There were brooms and buckets in one corner, and tools arranged at one wall, pipe wrenchers and screw drivers and spanners, each neatly pinned. Another wall was decorated with musical instruments.

He liked music, but had no real knowledge on that topic, however even he could identify a collection of flutes, in different sizes and colours, some small drums, a tiny violin. He must have stared open-mouthed, because Mister Heimlich stopped in what he was doing and smiled.

“Are you a musician?” Harry had spoken without meaning to.

Mister Heimlich first mustered him, then turned to do the same with the wall.

“Would that I still were. I think I was. Am I?” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, a very tall back casting a very long shadow in the glow of the single light bulb.

Harry lowered his gaze, suddenly ashamed. He was intruding into something here, although he could not say into what. So he took a long, too-hot gulp of his tea. When Mister Heimlich turned back towards him, Harry felt his eyes on him and lifted his head. Mister Heimlich was grinning, eyes sparkling. He clasped his forearms behind his back and raised his chest.

“A musician you might call me, Harry Potter, but these days I consider myself more an … orchestrator of things. I might not touch the string that makes the sound, yet even the smoke of a passing flame can be the sign that kicks off the symphony.”

Harry regarded him warily. Mister Heimlich hadn’t asked for his name, but then again, maybe the whole school knew who Harry-the-oddball-Potter was.

“Now, let’s see…” Mister Heimlich returned the wary stare Harry had shot him. “I would like to tell you a story, Harry, and I could. But I shouldn’t. I fear it is not my place and time to do so.”

He had started to pace. Harry shuffled under his blanket. From afar, muffled voices rang. Laughter, shouts, the chiming of the school bell. But all this suddenly began to fade, as if dimmed by a cloak of invisible fog. The tea in Harry’s mouth tasted spicy. He watched Mister Heimlich how he walked to a rack and stretched, elongated limbs elongating even further. Reaching far over his head, he pulled something from the shelf, which landed in his hands with a rich thud. Mister Heimlich inhaled, pressed the item to his chest and halted for what seemed like a very long moment to Harry, doing nothing else than breathing. With something between determination and finality, Mister Heimlich eventually walked over to him.

Harry set his tea aside, and Mister Heimlich put the heavy volume in Harry’s lap. It settled there, while Mister Heimlich turned and set off to the door. He looked back to Harry only once, eyes shimmering with something Harry had no name for.

“This is my gift to you, Harry Potter. Use it well.”

His gaze grew distant, passing right through Harry and he didn’t know what else. He spoke softly. “Forgive me, Creator.”

Then he was out of the door and never seen again at that school.

Neither did famous Harry Potter stay a pupil there for long, as most witches and wizards know. And today, he, Harry, knows something else – that it was then when his story began. When he swallowed down the shock of that day with the rest of his tea, comfortably tucked away in the caretaker’s den. When he turned the first pages of that very thick book in his lap, hunching over it with a boy’s naïve curiosity.

Harry Potter's story began on the day Szeth-son-son-Vallano wore white; on the day he was to kill a king.


	2. Staking claims

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might build up to the awesomeness a little more slowly in this work. I hope you like it nevertheles. P.S. there will be a little treat at the end of this chapter. I hope you like that, too. You may leave a comment either way. :)

From the moment he set his eyes and hands onto it, Harry knew the book was trouble. Or, rather, that he was in trouble if he ever wanted to call it his. He should have left the thing there and then, in the caretaker’s room. He should have shaken off the curiousness of the encounter like the the aftertaste of the odd dream that would still cling to a person in their waking hours, persistent and nonsensical.

But he couldn’t. Because the words, they clung to him just like that. Around Harry, school took place, while the words took him to places brimming with foreignness and familiarity all the same. Like an escape that wasn’t really one.

His growling stomach brought him back with a demanding call for attention. Harry’s mind jolted back into his body and rejoiced at the reunion. Stupid, he thought. There was nothing there but skin and bones, fingers that had gone clammy with excitement and a cramp in his calf. Harry stood and hobbled a bit, wondering where Mister Heimlich had gone. It didn’t matter much, really. He checked the clock on the wall. What mattered more was that school was over, but Harry’s tasks weren’t.

He stood in front of 4 Privet Drive with a trembling in his belly that was a tad shakier than usually. The brightness of the sky had dimmed, blue blending into the darker and fierier hues that whispered of the approach of dusk. The items inside Harry’s school bag weighed heavily. He steeled himself with a deep intake of breath, brushed off a stray ginger hair clinging to his jacket sleeve and rang the doorbell.

At least he intended to.

The door got jerked open the moment Harry had stretched out his hand.

“You!” Petunia’s face was pinched, which gave her the look of having bitten into something especially sour. Her mouth pressed into a small line. Then she gripped Harry by the ear and drew him in. He stumbled along until she finally released him. Harry rubbed his ear, but when a small noise of pain escaped him, he found hard eyes glaring at him. Angry spittle flew when Petunia spoke.

“You ungrateful little bastard! After all we’ve already been through with you. Just wait until Vernon gets home! Now get out of my sight!” Her voice had turned into a cry.

Harry, all too eager to follow her command, hastened toward his cupboard, head lowered. He heard Petunia retreating into the kitchen with hard steps, and turned slightly to make sure. He should have foreseen what followed, yet the first thing he felt was surprise when he was suddenly knocked off his feet and the floor rose to greet him.

Pain followed.

Dudley hovering above him, grinning stupidly, piggy-eyes glinting above chubby cheeks and a broad mouth, leg still stretched out in a foot sweep, was worse than the pain. But the worst thing was that Harry's school bag had come off his shoulders and tumbled to the floor. The small tear at the front - the reason Petunia had handed the bag to Harry in the first place - must have widened in the fall. Because it was large enough now for the edge of a book to peek out.

Harry’s gaze locked with Dudley’s and a sudden spark of determination ignited and passed between the two. A furious bolting forwards, a scratching, wordless, scrabbling tussle ensued.

Harry was panting, straining feebly, hoping it had been enough. He had resigned when his head got lodged, sweaty and red, in one of Dudley’s wrestling locks. So when he finally got pushed to the wall, Harry did nothing else than to slump down, watching and trembling a little.

Dudley ripped open Harry’s school bag and spilled the contents on the floor, sending books thudding, pens clattering and paper flying.

“Diddykins!” Outrage had put flecks of red onto the white sheet of Petunia’s face. “What did he do?”

She pointed at the mess, causing Dudley to scratch his head and give what Harry judged as quite a long and eloquent speech by his cousin’s measure.

“He’s stole somethin’. Saw him comin’ out from the caretaker’s with somethin’ hidin’ under his shirt. What’s he sneakin’ about, hidin’? He has no right!” He kicked at what was lying on the floor.

Harry tried to contain the feeling spreading inside his chest. He kept a stoic face. Later. Later, there would be time.

“My Diddy-Dudley! I’m sure he did something wrong. I will see that he gets punished. But look, that’s only the boy’s school materials on the floor. My poor, poor Diddykins! Had been a hard day for you, right? Now come here. Shall I make you a big plate of those pancakes you like best? Doesn’t that sound like a very good idea?” Petunia had put her spindly arms around Dudley, herding the stocky body into her stiff skirt, sharp chin and elbows going all soft, eyes brown and wide.

Until their gaze narrowed onto Harry. From the depths of the skirt, another pair glared at him with much the same intensity.

“Clean up the mess you made before I forget myself.” She turned her and Dudley’s back to Harry, adding in a loud enough voice for Harry to catch: “The day we’ll finally get rid of that boy…”

Her words reverberated inside Harry, hollow and echoing, as he crawled over to the heap of clutter. He piled his Math’s onto his English book, wedging in some assignment sheets on basic natural laws he still had to complete. He was in the act of stuffing his pens back into their case when a gust of wind sent papers fluttering.

“Dudley? There’s something on the doorstep for y…” Uncle Vernon had just about taken off his jacket and hat when he set his eyes on Harry crouching on the floor.

“Boy!”

It was one of his uncle’s greater abilities; to make a simple word like “boy” sound both insulting and threatening. Harry watched the walrus-like figure drawing closer, belly-fat and mustache quivering, the eyes small flints of barely controlled anger.

Harry scuffled, quickly gathering his things and spun to flee. A heavy palm landed onto his shoulder, a firm grip onto the collar at his neck brought him face to face with a teeth-gritting, snorting Vernon Dursley.

“Cupboard!” he roared. “No meal!”

With that, he released Harry who did as he was told. The door to the cupboard under the stairs closed, then latched. Harry flung his armload of school stuff under his bed and himself onto it. He burrowed his head deep into his pillow and exhaled a shuddering breath.

Then he smiled.

When the sizzling and scent of pancakes drifted through 4 Privet Drive, and a family sat around a table, sharing a meal and a conversation, it was not a boy on a school roof they discussed, but how Dudley Dursley got chosen as the proud winner in this year’s competition of the British Association of Marvelous Boys’ Names. Harry still smiled then, despite the cramps in his stomach demanding attention. He ignored them, kept his ear glued to the door to hear the rest of what was said at the table. He got a very good mental image of Dudley’s expression as he unwrapped his “prize” and set it aside with a slightly disgusted noise.

Finally giving in to his weariness, he pulled his ear off the door and his shoes off his feet. Stretching out onto his bed, he gazed up to the shelf above it, where a small collection of broken things stood guard. Harry’s smile turned into a grin.

February took the two weeks of Harry’s detention to crack the coat of ice encasing the streets, once in a while sending a small avalanche crashing down over the rim of rain gutters, plucking off icicles. And while the world outside thawed with a startling rapidity, with spring slinking around the corner, waiting to pounce on and pommel winter away, Harry stayed ensconced inside his cupboard. He, too, waited.

He waited and worked, exclaiming loudly how small a place his cupboard was and how little space he had. It was not very hard work, for there soon came the day when his door crashed open and a sack full of clattering, clunking items bumped to the floor inside his cupboard.

Harry looked up from where he sat, wedged into a corner between bed and wall.

“What are you staring at? What do you think a cupboard is there for? Stow those things away!” Aunt Petunia raised the tip of her nose and crossed her arms. Harry’s pulse quickened, his fingertips pressing onto the broken toy soldier he had been playing with. He swallowed. Petunia’s eyes narrowed slightly and Harry rapidly made a face he hoped was convincing. It was, it seemed, because she huffed and strode away. Harry, however, felt like jelly all over. His heart raced. He shook off the sudden dizziness and hastened to the door, jammed it close. For a moment, he just stood there, breathing, anticipation washing through him.

He let his gaze wander over his belongings - toy soldiers without a leg or an arm, snapped-through pens and crayons, a model of a plane missing one wing. There was not a thing Harry could call his own without it having passed through Dudley’s spoiling hands. Books were more likely to stay whole, though. He made a mental note to somehow, one day, repay Mrs. Figg her help with the typewriter and the wrapping, although his nose itched at the mere thought of cat hair.

He bent over the sack and drew out the Way of Kings.

***

She formed herself first as a ribbon of light, a streak of awesomeness, a dazzling bolt of blue. Then she settled on a more – condensed – but equally exceptional form suitable for this realm. She hovered over him, hand on her chin, pondering something. A thought, a concept. How funny. Was she pondering herself, then? Thoughts thinking thoughts’ thoughts? She found herself drifting apart again, unraveling, and refocused.

He was asleep. She spiraled down to him, settling on his shoulder. She could imagine, no, nearly feel the warmth he radiated. What curious creatures. Transforming all the time, but likewise perpetuating, repeating the same patterns over and over. But he had changed, after she had brought him the leaf. She felt the pulsing of a beginning here. It drew her to him, framing her, defining her. Because she had given him something? And she would take something in return… yes, that was right. Something started to flutter wildly inside her. Meaning. Memories?

A gift…

A gift would bind together the sender and the receiver, irrevocably. The gift itself could fade away, but there was a fabric in the network of reality where the moment of this bond would take root into timelessness, ever-present, there to be drawn upon again and again.

But not a leaf, no, the gift had to come in another form.

Yet the knowledge still evaded her, fleeting like a ray of sunlight piercing through murky waters. Storms, she was being poetic today. That made her giggle, a soft chime that floated through the barrack. Whatever “being poetic” meant – she actually had no idea.

“Syl?” he croaked, his eyes fluttering open. He sat up and touched the brand on his forehead, frowning. “I just had the strangest of dreams.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I will read and appreciate every single comment.


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